Non-Profit and Government

Grunwald Associates LLC is a small research and consulting firm with a big reputation for creative public sector research and successful social marketing. We deliver proven value to government, non-profit and corporate clients through research, coalition building, social marketing and consulting services. Leading industry executives call our work “the gold standard”.

Sophisticated Public Sector Research and Evaluation

We specialize in challenging assignments that require an in-depth understanding of multiple communities, combined with mastery of state-of-the-art research methodologies. Our research often focuses on hard to reach populations.

Grunwald Associates is known for bringing sophisticated consumer market research techniques into the public sector. For example, we conduct surveys on messaging, positioning, branding, awareness, usage, and design using a variety of tools. Our positioning and branding studies often use ‘derived importance’ and other advanced statistical methods to identify the individual attributes that contribute to respondent perceptions.

We also conduct simulation-based surveys that recreate the decision-making process via a choice exercise for participants. These choice-based surveys are extremely powerful tools that generate precise insights for service and product design, business development, and pricing. Rather than simply asking preferences in a vacuum, we expose participants to a series of more realistic choice scenarios involving a number of dynamic variables. The main deliverable for our simulation studies is a proprietary interactive software tool that allows clients to explore “what if” scenarios and create forecasts from their desktop – all in real time.

In addition, we conduct qualitative research, including focus groups, individual interviews, ethnographies and similar techniques that can be used to obtain rich feedback on service and product concepts, designs, and messages. Such qualitative research can also be used to generate concrete guidance on, and validation of, existing prototype services and products.

We work public sector clients and corporate clients to create and manage vibrant online communities. We can help you determine the right role for online communities and networks in your organization, and we can build, recruit, and grow them across multiple platforms. Please see our online communities section for more information.

“Cut Through the Noise” – High Impact Public Research

Many organizations and companies are interested in more effective messaging to the public, thought leaders and key communities. But these efforts face new difficulties. Important organizational messages are getting lost amidst the “noise” from multiple media and a fragmented public. Well designed public surveys are a very effective way of addressing these challenges by cutting through the media noise while simultaneously influencing the debate over complicated issues.

Grunwald creates and executes high impact public studies for clients such as the George Lucas Foundation, PBS, the Educational Testing Service, and the National Cable Television Association. We have an unbroken track record of successfully identifying research topics that yield the most powerful findings – and then teasing out message points from the findings and designing campaigns that promote results. Reports from our studies help deliver often complex messages to national and local thought leaders and the general public.

Grunwald Associates also conducts a series of industry-wide studies on subjects such as technology, education, and families. These industry initiatives consistently generate millions of positive media impressions for our underwriters, which include Sesame Workshop, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Educational Testing Service, Verizon, Microsoft, Kodak, News Corporation, BellSouth, and AT&T. Our reputation for research integrity and creativity has garnered the trust of key national education associations and local educators. As a result, we are able to work with partners such as the PTAs, National School Boards Association, CoSN and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Many of our public reports are free anddownloadable on our reports page.

Stakeholder Coalitions and Social Marketing

Grunwald Associates often helps clients develop successful alliances with key communities, education organizations, information companies, entertainment producers, and thought leaders. Our team members have worked with all the Regional Bell Operating Companies in creating successful coalitions with leading education associations, information provider companies, and others. Grunwald team members helped build and run Access 2000, a coalition of independent entertainment producers; we played the same role with the Alliance for Public Technology. Our work building alliances and coalitions includes everything from identifying potential partners and screening candidates, to suggesting deal points and participating in discussions as appropriate.

We often use our research to help promote complex message points. We use conventional techniques as well as viral promotion and marketing to promote our findings, since we know how to generate positive word-of-mouth – and how to leverage it.